I always use maps. Not the tiny, annoyingly limited ones on smartphones. I use real paper maps that you open from a rectangle and rarely refold properly. Maps you can take out to rapidly scan on the road in unfamiliar places. Paper maps are there for you every time you need them and they don’t need recharging. They simply and dependably orient (指方向) and inform.

I’ve traveled in and out of the state with my grandson Connor often enough to have long since introduced him to this way of getting from place to place. His first response as an 8-year-old was “Grandma, just use the GPS.” But that was no help since the one in my old car was hopelessly out of date. As for a smartphone, I didn’t own one. And so Connor is learning to use paper maps too. Opening one myself is akin to texting while driving, perhaps even more distracting for me. I’ve done it, but I’ve reformed.

Our next trip will be to visit friends in Connecticut, and I’ve just picked up new copies of the state’s road maps. I’ve yellow-highlighted our route from Providence, Rhode Island, to Old Saybrook and Durham in Connecticut, then back to Providence. It is a pretty familiar route for me, as I’ve spent multiple summers doing geologic fieldwork in the forests and the Connecticut River Valley. Still, I wouldn’t think of driving without paper maps. It would be too out of character.

Going over the route with now 13-year-old Connor so that he can follow along and occasionally answer a routing question while I’m driving may take some perseverance (毅力) on my part. He looks at road maps the same way he looks at my old college typewriter or my mom’s Nokia phone. I could really annoy Connor by informing him of directional signs from the sun, moon, and stars. But enough is enough for a teenager. By the time he’s driving himself, I’ll put new maps of India surrounding states in his car. Who knows when a cellphone might quit or a GPS system might stop working?

1. What does the author like about paper maps?

A．They are very cheap.

B．They are quite reliable.

C．They can be easily carried.

D．They can be neatly refolded.

2. What does the underlined word “akin” in Paragraph 2 mean?

A．Familiar.	B．Similar.
C．Suitable.	D．Dangerous.

3. Why does the author need road maps during her next trip to Connecticut?

A．She is used to driving with maps.

B．She is unfamiliar with this place.

C．Her grandson insists on bringing maps.

D．Her geologic fieldwork requires maps.

4. What can be inferred from the last paragraph?

A．Connor now likes paper maps very much.

B．Connor’s future cars might not place GPS devices.

C．Teenagers today are not used to using paper maps.

D．Connor’s attitude to paper maps annoyed the author.

How the languages of the world appeared is largely a mystery. Considering that it might have taken thousands of years, it is attractive to see how deaf people can create novel sign languages spontaneously. Interestingly, children played an important role in the development of these novel languages. However, how exactly this happened has not been documented.

In a series of studies, researchers attempted to recreate exactly this process. Children were invited to stay in two different rooms and an online connection was set up between them. After a brief familiarisation with the set-up, the researchers sneakily (偷偷地) turned off the sound and watched as the children found new ways of communicating that go beyond spoken language.

The children’s task was to describe an image with different themes in a co-ordination game. With concrete thing—like a hammer or a fork—children quickly found a solution by imitating the matching action, for example, eating, in a gesture. But the researchers repeatedly challenged the children with new, more abstract pictures. In the course of the study, the images to be described became more and more complex, which was also reflected in the gestures that the children produced. In order to communicate,the children invented separate gestures and began to combine them—thus creating a kind of small local grammar.

How does a language come into being? Based on the present study, the following steps appear reasonable: First, people create reference to actions and objects through signs that resemble things. The precondition for this is a common ground of experience between interaction partners. Partners also co-ordinate (协调) by imitating each other so that they use the same signs for the same things. The signs thus gain interpersonal and eventually conventional meaning. Over time, the relationships between the signs and things become more abstract and the meaning of the individual signs becomes more specific. Grammatical structures are gradually introduced when there is a need to communicate complex facts. However, the most remarkable aspect of the current studies is that these processes can be observed under controlled circumstances and within 30 minutes.

5. How did the researchers carry out the experiment?

A．By making the communication in total silence.

B．By inferring and copying the documented materials.

C．By observing children communicating face to face.

D．By listening secretly to the communication of children.

6. What should children do in the studies?

A．Show how to do different things with different tools.

B．Take several oral examinations on languages.

C．Describe things to others without spoken languages.

D．Name some abstract objects which they have never seen.

7. What is the process of creating a language?

A．Signs→Accepted meaning→Interpersonal meaning→Language

B．Interpersonal meaning→Accepted meaning→Signs→Language

C．Accepted meaning→Interpersonal meaning→Signs→Language

D．Signs→Interpersonal meaning→Accepted meaning→Language

8. What is the text mainly about?

A．The development of novel sign languages.

B．The formation of languages.

C．The role children play in creating languages.

D．The circumstances of languages coming into being.

There are thousands of international students who enroll (注册) in private high schools in the U.S. each year.     9    

Cape Cod Academy is located in one of the least diverse parts of Massachusetts. Tony Zhang comes from Guiyang, a city in southern China. When asked about his first day there, Tony said he had no friends for the first couple of weeks.     10     Not because of the clothes, but because he chose a high school nearly 8,000 miles from home. Tony wants to experience a new culture and go to college in the U.S. He says the move forced him to grow up.

When another teenager Catherine Zhao got here from Beijing, it took her quite a while to get used to small-town Cape Cod. There are no skyscrapers and everybody drives.     11     “In China, we learn English in class, we know how to write, how to read, but there are not too many opportunities to talk there,” she said.

    12     Some students chat with their parents via the Internet every day. Tony also talked about the difficulties he and other Chinese students faced there. “I will say they, the American students, in general, think we’re math geniuses or science geniuses. But, you know, to be honest, we are human beings as well, so we play sports, too,” he said. Another thing was, when they saw him writing Chinese, they would be like, “Oh my God, how can you even do that, to communicate in such a complicated language?”

Realizing that is part of life here for Tony and his Chinese classmates, Catherine is taking the long view, and hopes to study piano at Boston’s Berkley School of Music. Tony wants to major in economics and education at Brown University. After, he says, he wants to go back to China and work on the education system there.     13    

A．There’s homesickness, too.

B．As we can see, he’s matured a lot.

C．Actually, he isn’t like many teenagers.

D．That can bring on some serious culture shock.

E．She said the biggest challenge for her was talking.

F．Above all, they have to overcome the culture shock first.

G．She admitted that she hated communicating with other peers.

I wasn’t prepared for the way I felt when my 18 year-old son, Dylan, left for Asia during his winter break.

I was ______ the moment he first told my husband Michael and me that he wanted to use some of his ______ to travel around China. We were excited for him to explore the world. We told him that traveling was one of the best ways to spend his money and the ______ would last a lifetime.

On the morning of Dylan’s departure, he put a few more things into his bag. Before he and Michael ______ to the airport, I yelled, " Be safe, and ______ when you arrive in Shanghai.”

That night while he was flying somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, it hit me that Dylan was really on his ______. I woke hourly, each time ______ the clock and counting the hours before he would land the following morning. ______ my decision to let him go alone, I prayed and thought about all the things that could go ______. Then I heard for him. The first text said he’d arrived. The second text said his luggage didn't make it.

Feeling anxious, I madly attempted to ______ his luggage. To search for lost baggage, I persuaded him to go back to the airport and suggested he go to the airline's office. My efforts ______. All the while Dylan was texting me he was all right.

After that, there was no more ______ about lost luggage. I knew that he'd figure it out, and that the life lesson would be ______.

After Several days into the trip, Dylan sent a photo from Hong Kong. “I thought I could never study abroad anywhere but Europe, ______ I could definitely do it here,” his note read.

And I was ______.

14.

A．thrilled

B．worried

C．eager

D．upset

15.

A．skills

B．savings

C．relations

D．friends

16.

A．costs

B．virtues

C．items

D．memories

17.

A．gave off

B．saw off

C．pulled away

D．ran away

18.

A．write

B．call

C．text

D．email

19.

A．behalf

B．feet

C．mind

D．own

20.

A．mending

B．checking

C．setting

D．winding

21.

A．Convincing

B．Doubting

C．Admitting

D．Denying

22.

A．wrong

B．wild

C．smooth

D．bad

23.

A．bring down

B．turn down

C．settle down

D．track down

24.

A．failed

B．worked

C．paid

D．lost

25.

A．presentation

B．talk

C．appearance

D．rumor

26.

A．awful

B．unbearable

C．deep

D．worthless

27.

A．or

B．so

C．and

D．but

28.

A．in despair

B．at a loss

C．at peace

D．in reality

阅读下面材料, 在空白处填写1个适当的单词或用括号内单词的正确形式。

In Hebei Province lies a vast forest called Saihanba. This green Great Wall,     29     at its peak during the Qing Dynasty covered thousands of hectares, had by the 1950s     30    （virtual）disappeared. This allowed sand to blow into Beijing from the northern deserts.

Saihanba is a combination of Chinese and Mongolian,     31    （mean）“beautiful highlands". Until the Qing Dynasty, it was a royal hunting land because of its cool summer weather and beautiful surroundings. However, most of the area had turned into a desert by the end of the Qing Dynasty.

In fact 56 years ago there was only one tree left. But without that tree, there     32    （be）no miracle of Saihanba today. In the early 1960s, over 350 foresters     33    （send）to this area to fight the desert. They were required     34    （rebuild）the forest in Saihanba. Few people, including the foresters themselves, believed they would succeed.

Their doubt disappeared, however, when they found the 200-year-old tree, swaying alone in     35     wind. If one tree could survive here,     36     could millions of trees, they thought.

After decades of hard work, three generations of the foresters have restored almost 80% of the original Saihanba forest. Recently, they were awarded the     37    （high）environmental honor from the United Nations for their great     38    （contribute）to creating a greener world.

39. 阅读下面材料, 根据其内容和所给段落开头语续写两段，使之构成一篇完整的短文。续写词数应为150左右。

A tradesman was leading a caravan (商队) to another country to sell his goods. Along the way they came to the edge of a hot-sand desert. They learnt that during the daytime the sun heated up the fine sand until it was as hot as charcoal (木炭), so no one could walk on it — not even camels! Then the caravan leader hired a desert guide, one who could follow the stars, so they could travel only at night when the sand cooled down. The guide sat on the first cart. And they began the dangerous night-time journey across the desert. A couple of nights later, after eating their evening meal and waiting for the sand to cool, they started out again.

Later that night, the desert guide, who was driving the first cart, saw from the stars that they were getting close to the other side of the desert. He had been very tired, so when he relaxed, he fell asleep. Then the camels who, of course, couldn’t tell directions by reading the stars, gradually turned to the side and went in a big wide circle until they ended up at the same place that they started from! By then it was morning, and the people woke up and realized they were back at the same spot where they started. They lost heart and began to cry about their condition. Since the desert crossing was supposed to be over by now, they had no more water, and they were worried about there was nothing to drink, and were extremely afraid they would die of thirst. They even began to blame the caravan leader and the desert guide. However, the leader himself didn’t lose courage. He talked with the desert guide and then they began wandering, trying to work out a plan.

Paragraph 1

Suddenly, the leader noticed a small clump (团) of grass.

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Paragraph 2

A spring (泉源) was found at last.

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